Ideas need to add up before they can multiply

August 14, 2006

A Debate or a Discussion?

Bob Sutton is a professor of
Management Science and Engineering at Stanford Engineering School and one of my all
time favorite authors and commentators on innovation, management, and
creativity in business.

In their
book on evidence-based management, he and Jeffrey Pfeffer, hold that:
“Evidence-based management is based on the belief that facing the hard facts
about what works and what doesn’t, understanding the dangerous half-truths that
constitute so much conventional wisdom about management, and rejecting the
total nonsense that too often passes for sound advice will help organizations
perform better”.

Michael
Lovaglia, a Professor and Department Chair in the Sociology Department at
the University of Iowa, wrote to Sutton and Pfeffer and proposed Lovaglia's Law:

The more important the outcome of a
decision, the more people will resist using evidence to make it.

As Professor Sutton
writes, “…Clearly, the more important the decision, the more people involved
stand to lose and gain, and the more strongly they push for outcomes that
enhance their self-interest rather than are best for everyone involved.”

“I have always been
fascinated by the fact that (in spite of what they teach us in school) logic,
reason, rationality and sensible analysis seem to play so little part in human
affairs”.

But David’s comments are
really interesting. He is highly,
diversely and “well” educated, yet he says “The more I think about this, the
more outraged I get that my education positively encouraged me to ignore these
considerations, and focus instead on advanced logical skills so I could pass
the exams at the end of the semester.”